For over a century, writers and architects have imagined the cities of the future.

In the late 1960s, architect Paolo Soleri envisioned “arcology” - a word that combines “architecture” and “ecology," with a goal of building structures to house large populations in self-contained environments with a self-sustaining economy and agriculture. “In the three-dimensional city, man defines a human ecology. In it he is a country dweller and metropolitan man in one. By it the inner and the outer are at ‘skin’ distance. He has made the city in his own image. Arcology: the city in the image of man.” (Paolo Soleri)

For over a century, writers and architects have imagined the cities of the future as giant structures that contain entire metropolises. To some, these buildings present the best means for cities to exist in harmony with nature, while others forsee grotesque monstrosities destructive to the human spirit. In the mid-20th century, engineer and futurist R. Buckminster Fuller imagined city-enclosing plastic domes and enormous housing projects resembling nuclear cooling towers. These ideas are impractical but they explore the limits of conventional architectural thinking. Science fiction writers and artists often imagine future architecture that oppresses the human spirit. Megastructures such as the pyramid-like Tyrell Buildings of “Blade Runner” dominate a decrepit skyline. The decaying old city is simply covered with layers of newer, larger buildings in a process of “retrofitting.” Beginning in the late 1960s, architect Paolo Soleri envisioned a more humane approach. The word “arcology” is a combination of “architecture” and “ecology.” The goal is to build megastructures that would house a population of a million or more people, but in a self-contained environment with its own economy and agriculture. “In the three-dimensional city, man defines a human ecology. In it he is a country dweller and metropolitan man in one. By it the inner and the outer are at ‘skin’ distance. He has made the city in his own image. Arcology: the city in the image of man.” (Paolo Soleri) In 1996, a group of 75 Japanese corporations commissioned Soleri to design the one-kilometer-tall Hyper Bulding, a vertical city for 100,000 people. Existing in harmony with nature, the Hyper Building was designed to recycle waste, produce food in greenhouses, and use the sun’s light and heat for power and climate control. The structure was designed for passive heating and cooling without the need for machinery. An economic recession put the brakes on the project and it was never built. Soleri’s arcology concept is being put to the test in the Arcosanti experimental community being built in Arizona. Construction began in 1970. When complete the town will house 5,000 people. Buildings are composed of locally produced concrete and are designed to capture sunlight and heat. To be built in the desert near Abu Dhabi, Masdar is a 2.3-square-mile (6 sq km) planned city of 40,000 residents. Buildings are designed to reduce reliance on artificial lighting and air conditioning, and the city will run entirely on solar power and renewable energy. Begun in 2006, the project is planned for completion around 2020-2025.

Resilience is the word of the decade, as sustainability was in previous decades. No doubt, our view of the kind and quality of cities we as societies want to build will continue to evolve and inspire a new descriptive goal. Surely we have not lost our desire for sustainable cities, with footprints we can globally and locally afford, even though our focus has rightly been on resilience, after what seems like a relentless drum beat of natural disasters around the world.

It speaks to the question: what is the city we want to create in the future? What is the city in which we want to live? Certainly that city is sustainable, since we want our cities to balance consumption and inputs to make a footprint that can last into the future. Certainly it is resilient, so our cities are still in existence after the next 100-year storm, now apparently due every few years.

And yet: as we build this vision we know that cities must also be livable. Indeed, we must view livability as the third indispensible—and arguably most important—leg supporting the cities of our dreams: resilient + sustainable + livable.

We thank you, Lauren Moss, for the interesting post. The post speaks to the three buzz words for our cities now and in the future...livable, resilient, sustainable....

New Yorkers exhibited a lot of personal and psychological resilience after Hurricane Sandy—they picked themselves up and started again, often rebuilding their lives in the same spot. This is true all over: people are resilient in the face of hard times..learn more

'We know that the planet is warming up and the human population is growing, raising our demand for resources. The combination of these factors is why the battle against climate change will be decided in cities, particularly cities in the Asia-Pacific.

To tackle these challenges, we need practical and successful ideas that can easily be replicated.

At the 4th Sustainable Cities Conference last week in Singapore, I discussed ways for Singapore and Hong Kong, already recognised as innovative cities in tackling these problems, to become even greener and establish themselves as leaders in creating sustainable city models for the Asia-Pacific.'

If you work for a young web company, you probably think your office is pretty cool. Maybe it has a pool table or even a roof terrace. Pah! Give it 37 years and, according to engineering company Arup, our office blocks will contain working farms, produce their own energy, be linked together by suspended green walkways and sections of each floor will be removable, upgradable and replaceable. Intersting article on Smart Cities that looks into some of the key innovations by Shell and IBM.

Indeed, the floors of Arup’s building occupied by algae-filled biofuel pods are not unlike a current project by French biochemist Pierre Calleja. He is building algae street lamps that eat up CO2 in the atmosphere. Combine this with another algae lamp that produces its own light using energy created by photosynthesis and you get self-powered, anti-pollution street lamps.

Researchers at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) just announced their creation of a graphene supercapacitor — essentially a battery but one that charges up to 1,000 times faster than the normal kind, and that can be composted. The future promises instant phone chargers and petrol stations with plugs that can charge cars faster than they currently fill up on unleaded.

At last week’s TED conference in LA an architect and computer scientist Skylar Tibbets showed off 4D printing — essentially objects that self-assemble by absorbing water. For Tibbets this material is best used for installing underground water pipes.

Robinson is loath to point out the world’s smartest city (he mentions Birmingham as a candidate) but Newton says new cities in emerging markets have the potential to “leapfrog other parts of the world.”

The real smart aspect may come down not to the technology which we know exists but to foresight and willingness to change.

“There have to be new models of collaboration for businesses and decision-makers in cities and government to have the positive impact we know the technology could support,” says Newton. The city that leads in this department may just end up the smartest in the class.

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